Archaeologists Unearth Viking-Era Burial With Incredibly Rare Casket
Archaeologists from Denmark's Moesgaard Museum have uncovered 30 Viking Age graves dating from 800 to 1050 CE, just under five miles north of Aarhus. Located near the town of Lisbjerg, the burial site has yielded a number of spectacular objects hinting at ties with Danish royalty.
'The burial site is most likely connected to the Viking-era manor in Lisbjerg, which is less than a kilometer from the burial site,' Mads Ravn, an archaeologist from Moesgaard and Viking Age expert, explained in the Moesgaard statement announcing the discovery. 'The objects we have found in the graves tell us that those buried here were people of high status—it could be the extended family from the farm that is buried here.'
However, the varying grave sizes and grave goods also suggest that people of different social classes were laid to rest here, potentially nobles and the people they enslaved. According to the archaeologists, the graves are pagan and probably date to the 900s. In fact, Ravn told the AFP that the burial might include one of Harald Bluetooth's earls or stewards.
The Viking Age saw Denmark's first kings rise to power and Aarhus become one of the region's most important royal and trade centers. Harald Bluetooth was king during the second half of the 10th century. He is best known for unifying Denmark, converting the country to Christianity, and conquering Norway—as well as inspiring the name of the familiar wireless technology.
The Lisbjerg burial includes grave goods such as coins, ceramics, and a rare casket. Archaeologists left the casket within a block of soil in order to complete the excavation of the artifact in a laboratory, according to The History Blog. Nevertheless, X-ray images reveal that the wooden box is around 12.6 square inches, likely made of oak, and features fancy rivets, potentially silver-plated fittings, and a locking mechanism. It contains pearls, a pair of scissors around 5.5 inches long (14 centimeters), an intricate silver bead, a needle, gold thread, possibly a brooch and a ribbon with gold thread, as well as the teeth and bones of a deceased individual.
The researchers suggest that the casket likely belonged to an important woman. It represents a rare specimen of just a few such objects known to scholars, including one unearthed in the town of Haldum, just 7.5 miles (12 km) from Lisbjerg. As reported by The History Blog, the fittings of the newly discovered casket are also similar to those of the beautiful ninth-century Bamberg Casket, an extremely ornate Viking box with a complex locking mechanism currently housed in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich.
Overall, 'the finds in Lisbjerg are part of a series of previous fine finds in the Aarhus area,' said Kasper H. Andersen, a historian at Moesgaard also specialized in the Viking Age. 'Together, they paint the picture of an aristocratic environment that was linked to royal power, and which was part of the Vikings' vast and dynamic world.'
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Fossils show two types of ancient human ancestors lived at the same place and time. One was possibly an unknown species
Ancient, fossilized teeth, uncovered during a decades-long archaeology project in northeastern Ethiopia, indicate that two different kinds of hominins, or human ancestors, lived in the same place between 2.6 million and 2.8 million years ago — and one of them may be a previously unknown species. The discovery provides a new glimpse into the complex web of human evolution. Ten of the teeth, found between 2018 and 2020, belong to the genus Australopithecus, an ancient human relative. Meanwhile, three teeth, found in 2015, belong to the genus Homo, which includes modern humans, or Homo sapiens. The results were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Such an overlapping of two hominins in the fossil record is rare, which had previously led scientists to believe that Homo appeared after Australopithecus, rather than the two being contemporaries. Australopithecus species walked upright much like modern humans, but had relatively small brains, closer in size to those of apes. The emergence of Homo species, with their larger brains, is easy for people today to view as some sort of evolutionary upgrade on a path to modern humanity. But the coexistence of the two demonstrates that hominins developed, and lived, in multiple varieties at once. 'This new research shows that the image many of us have in our minds of an ape to a Neanderthal to a modern human is not correct — evolution doesn't work like that,' said study coauthor Kaye Reed, research scientist and president's professor emerita at the Institute of Human Origins and emeritus professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, via email. 'Here we have two hominin species that are together. And human evolution is not linear, it's a bushy tree, there are life forms that go extinct.' Since 2002, Reed has been a codirector of the Ledi-Geraru Research Project, which is focused, in part, on searching for evidence of early Homo species. In 2015, the team announced the discovery of the oldest known Homo jawbone at 2.8 million years old. It has also searched for later evidence of Australopithecus afarensis, which first appeared 3.9 million years ago, but there is no sign of these ancient human relatives in the fossil record after 2.95 million years ago — suggesting they went extinct before Homo's first appearance. Australopithecus afarensis is best represented by the famed fossilized remains of Lucy, discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia. Lucy was shorter than an average human, reaching about 3.3 feet (1 meter) in height, had an apelike face and a brain about one-third the size of a human brain. Her fossil showcased a mixture of humanlike and apelike traits and provided proof that ancient human relatives walked upright 3.2 million years ago. When the team discovered the Australopithecus teeth during two separate digs in 2018 and 2020, it compared them with species such as afarensis and another hominin group known as garhi, but they didn't match up. Instead, the scientists believe the teeth belong to a previously unknown species of Australopithecus that walked the Earth after Lucy — and alongside an early Homo species. 'Once we found Homo, I thought that was all we would find, and then one day on survey, we found the Australopithecus teeth,' Reed said. 'What is most important, is that it shows again, that human evolution is not linear. There were species that went extinct; some were better adapted than others, and others interbred with us — we know this for Neanderthals for sure. So anytime that we have another piece to the puzzle of where we came from, it is important.' Cracks in Earth's surface The teeth were found in Ethiopia's Afar region, a key place for researchers seeking answers about human evolution. A variety of preserved fossils have been found there as well as some of the earliest stone tools, Reed said. The Afar region is an active rifting environment — the tectonic plates beneath its earth are actively pulling apart and exposing older layers of sediment that shed light on almost 5 million years of evolution, Reed said. 'The continent is quite literally unzipping there, which creates a lot of volcanism and tectonics,' said study coauthor Christopher Campisano, associate director and associate professor at the Institute of Human Origins and associate professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State, in a video the school released. 'At 2 1⁄2, 3 million years ago, these volcanoes spewed out ash that contain crystals called feldspars that allow us to date the eruptions that were happening on the landscape when they're deposited.' The Australopithecus teeth documented in the new study were dated to 2.63 million years ago, while the Homo teeth are from 2.59 million and 2.78 million years ago. But the team is cautious about identifying a species for any of the teeth until it has more data and more fossils. 'We know what the teeth and mandible of the earliest Homo look like, but that's it,' said Brian Villmoare, lead study author and associate professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in a statement. 'This emphasizes the critical importance of finding additional fossils to understand the differences between Australopithecus and Homo, and potentially how they were able to overlap in the fossil record at the same location.' The Australopithecus teeth broadly resembled those of the afarensis species in contour and the size of the molars, but features of the cusps and canine teeth had not been previously seen in afarensis or garhi teeth, Villmoare said. The teeth were also different in shape than those of any Homo species, or of the ancient human relative Paranthropus, known for its large teeth and chewing muscles. 'Obviously these are only teeth,' Villmoare said, 'but we are continuing field work in the hopes of recovering other parts of the anatomy that might increase resolution on the taxonomy.' Even just finding the teeth was a complicated task, according to Campisano. 'You're looking at little teeth, quite literally, individual teeth that look just like a lot of other of the little pebbles spread on the landscape,' he said in the video. 'And so, we have a great team of local Afars that are excellent fossil hunters. They've seen these things their entire lives walking around the landscape.' A blip for evolution The new study is important because it provides insight into a time frame from 3 million to 2 million years ago, a mysterious period in human evolutionary studies, said Dr. Stephanie Melillo, paleoanthropologist and assistant professor at Mercyhurst University in Pennsylvania. Melillo was not involved in this research, but she has participated in the Woranso-Mille Paleontological Research Project in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia. Part of the problem in learning about this stretch of prehistory is how ancient layers of dirt were deposited over the course of history in eastern Africa. 'Erosion in rivers and lakes were at a low level and only a little bit of dirt was deposited in the Afar,' Melillo wrote in an email. 'That deposited dirt contains the fossils — of our ancestors and all the animals that lived with us. When there is little deposition, there are few fossils.' A key feature helping archaeologists to understand humanity's evolution are structural basins, or 'bowls' on Earth's surface that naturally collect layers of sediment better than the surrounding landscape does — like the Turkana Basin stretching across southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, Melillo said. Previous research has found evidence to suggest that Homo and Paranthropus coexisted there 1.5 million years ago. The new study focuses on the Afar Depression, a basin to the north of the Turkana. 'This contribution by Villmoare and colleagues demonstrates that in the Afar there was also some other species around with Homo — but it isn't Paranthropus,' Melillo said. 'Instead, they identify this 'non-Homo' genus as Australopithecus. They do a very convincing job of demonstrating why the new fossils are not Paranthropus.' The study adds to growing evidence that Australopithecus was not roaming the Afar Depression alone, she said. A mysterious coexistence When Australopithecus and Homo were alive, the Afar Region, now mostly a semidesert, had much more seasonal variation in rainfall than it does today, Reed said. Millions of years ago, the environment there was still dominated by a dry season, but it was interrupted by a brief wet season. Rivers that carried water across the landscape existed for only part of the year. Few trees grew near the river, and the environment nearby was largely wetlands and grasslands. 'We have a fossil giraffe species that was eating grass, which probably indicates they were stressed as they eat trees and bushes almost every place else,' Reed said. 'Were the hominins eating the same thing? We are trying to find out by examining isotopes in their teeth and microscopic scratches on their teeth.' Understanding whether or not Homo and Australopithecus had the same food sources could paint a portrait of how our ancient ancestors shared or competed for resources, Reed said. The team also wants to try to identify which hominin made the stone tools found at the site. At the moment it's impossible to tell exactly how the two hominins coexisted, but Reed said she is hoping that future findings will provide more answers. 'Whenever you have an exciting discovery, if you're a paleontologist, you always know that you need more information,' Reed said. 'You need more fossils. More fossils will help us tell the story of what happened to our ancestors a long time ago — but because we're the survivors we know that it happened to us.' Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
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Fossils show two types of ancient human ancestors lived at the same place and time. One was possibly an unknown species
Ancient, fossilized teeth, uncovered during a decades-long archaeology project in northeastern Ethiopia, indicate that two different kinds of hominins, or human ancestors, lived in the same place between 2.6 million and 2.8 million years ago — and one of them may be a previously unknown species. The discovery provides a new glimpse into the complex web of human evolution. Ten of the teeth, found between 2018 and 2020, belong to the genus Australopithecus, an ancient human relative. Meanwhile, three teeth, found in 2015, belong to the genus Homo, which includes modern humans, or Homo sapiens. The results were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Such an overlapping of two hominins in the fossil record is rare, which had previously led scientists to believe that Homo appeared after Australopithecus, rather than the two being contemporaries. Australopithecus species walked upright much like modern humans, but had relatively small brains, closer in size to those of apes. The emergence of Homo species, with their larger brains, is easy for people today to view as some sort of evolutionary upgrade on a path to modern humanity. But the coexistence of the two demonstrates that hominins developed, and lived, in multiple varieties at once. 'This new research shows that the image many of us have in our minds of an ape to a Neanderthal to a modern human is not correct — evolution doesn't work like that,' said study coauthor Kaye Reed, research scientist and president's professor emerita at the Institute of Human Origins and emeritus professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, via email. 'Here we have two hominin species that are together. And human evolution is not linear, it's a bushy tree, there are life forms that go extinct.' Since 2002, Reed has been a codirector of the Ledi-Geraru Research Project, which is focused, in part, on searching for evidence of early Homo species. In 2015, the team announced the discovery of the oldest known Homo jawbone at 2.8 million years old. It has also searched for later evidence of Australopithecus afarensis, which first appeared 3.9 million years ago, but there is no sign of these ancient human relatives in the fossil record after 2.95 million years ago — suggesting they went extinct before Homo's first appearance. Australopithecus afarensis is best represented by the famed fossilized remains of Lucy, discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia. Lucy was shorter than an average human, reaching about 3.3 feet (1 meter) in height, had an apelike face and a brain about one-third the size of a human brain. Her fossil showcased a mixture of humanlike and apelike traits and provided proof that ancient human relatives walked upright 3.2 million years ago. When the team discovered the Australopithecus teeth during two separate digs in 2018 and 2020, it compared them with species such as afarensis and another hominin group known as garhi, but they didn't match up. Instead, the scientists believe the teeth belong to a previously unknown species of Australopithecus that walked the Earth after Lucy — and alongside an early Homo species. 'Once we found Homo, I thought that was all we would find, and then one day on survey, we found the Australopithecus teeth,' Reed said. 'What is most important, is that it shows again, that human evolution is not linear. There were species that went extinct; some were better adapted than others, and others interbred with us — we know this for Neanderthals for sure. So anytime that we have another piece to the puzzle of where we came from, it is important.' Cracks in Earth's surface The teeth were found in Ethiopia's Afar region, a key place for researchers seeking answers about human evolution. A variety of preserved fossils have been found there as well as some of the earliest stone tools, Reed said. The Afar region is an active rifting environment — the tectonic plates beneath its earth are actively pulling apart and exposing older layers of sediment that shed light on almost 5 million years of evolution, Reed said. 'The continent is quite literally unzipping there, which creates a lot of volcanism and tectonics,' said study coauthor Christopher Campisano, associate director and associate professor at the Institute of Human Origins and associate professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State, in a video the school released. 'At 2 1⁄2, 3 million years ago, these volcanoes spewed out ash that contain crystals called feldspars that allow us to date the eruptions that were happening on the landscape when they're deposited.' The Australopithecus teeth documented in the new study were dated to 2.63 million years ago, while the Homo teeth are from 2.59 million and 2.78 million years ago. But the team is cautious about identifying a species for any of the teeth until it has more data and more fossils. 'We know what the teeth and mandible of the earliest Homo look like, but that's it,' said Brian Villmoare, lead study author and associate professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in a statement. 'This emphasizes the critical importance of finding additional fossils to understand the differences between Australopithecus and Homo, and potentially how they were able to overlap in the fossil record at the same location.' The Australopithecus teeth broadly resembled those of the afarensis species in contour and the size of the molars, but features of the cusps and canine teeth had not been previously seen in afarensis or garhi teeth, Villmoare said. The teeth were also different in shape than those of any Homo species, or of the ancient human relative Paranthropus, known for its large teeth and chewing muscles. 'Obviously these are only teeth,' Villmoare said, 'but we are continuing field work in the hopes of recovering other parts of the anatomy that might increase resolution on the taxonomy.' Even just finding the teeth was a complicated task, according to Campisano. 'You're looking at little teeth, quite literally, individual teeth that look just like a lot of other of the little pebbles spread on the landscape,' he said in the video. 'And so, we have a great team of local Afars that are excellent fossil hunters. They've seen these things their entire lives walking around the landscape.' A blip for evolution The new study is important because it provides insight into a time frame from 3 million to 2 million years ago, a mysterious period in human evolutionary studies, said Dr. Stephanie Melillo, paleoanthropologist and assistant professor at Mercyhurst University in Pennsylvania. Melillo was not involved in this research, but she has participated in the Woranso-Mille Paleontological Research Project in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia. Part of the problem in learning about this stretch of prehistory is how ancient layers of dirt were deposited over the course of history in eastern Africa. 'Erosion in rivers and lakes were at a low level and only a little bit of dirt was deposited in the Afar,' Melillo wrote in an email. 'That deposited dirt contains the fossils — of our ancestors and all the animals that lived with us. When there is little deposition, there are few fossils.' A key feature helping archaeologists to understand humanity's evolution are structural basins, or 'bowls' on Earth's surface that naturally collect layers of sediment better than the surrounding landscape does — like the Turkana Basin stretching across southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya, Melillo said. Previous research has found evidence to suggest that Homo and Paranthropus coexisted there 1.5 million years ago. The new study focuses on the Afar Depression, a basin to the north of the Turkana. 'This contribution by Villmoare and colleagues demonstrates that in the Afar there was also some other species around with Homo — but it isn't Paranthropus,' Melillo said. 'Instead, they identify this 'non-Homo' genus as Australopithecus. They do a very convincing job of demonstrating why the new fossils are not Paranthropus.' The study adds to growing evidence that Australopithecus was not roaming the Afar Depression alone, she said. A mysterious coexistence When Australopithecus and Homo were alive, the Afar Region, now mostly a semidesert, had much more seasonal variation in rainfall than it does today, Reed said. Millions of years ago, the environment there was still dominated by a dry season, but it was interrupted by a brief wet season. Rivers that carried water across the landscape existed for only part of the year. Few trees grew near the river, and the environment nearby was largely wetlands and grasslands. 'We have a fossil giraffe species that was eating grass, which probably indicates they were stressed as they eat trees and bushes almost every place else,' Reed said. 'Were the hominins eating the same thing? We are trying to find out by examining isotopes in their teeth and microscopic scratches on their teeth.' Understanding whether or not Homo and Australopithecus had the same food sources could paint a portrait of how our ancient ancestors shared or competed for resources, Reed said. The team also wants to try to identify which hominin made the stone tools found at the site. At the moment it's impossible to tell exactly how the two hominins coexisted, but Reed said she is hoping that future findings will provide more answers. 'Whenever you have an exciting discovery, if you're a paleontologist, you always know that you need more information,' Reed said. 'You need more fossils. More fossils will help us tell the story of what happened to our ancestors a long time ago — but because we're the survivors we know that it happened to us.' Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Solve the daily Crossword
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New Genetic Test Predicts Children With Future Risk of High BMI
A new test helps predict which kids face the largest genetic risk of a high body mass index (BMI) later in life. That could help parents establish healthy habits early on. The new test, put together by a large team of international researchers, is what's known as a polygenic score or PGS. These scores are used to group genetic variations to predict a certain characteristic, which in this case is BMI. Related: "What makes the score so powerful is its ability to predict, before the age of five, whether a child is likely to develop obesity in adulthood, well before other risk factors start to shape their weight later in childhood," says genetic epidemiologist Roelof Smit, from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. "Intervening at this point can have a huge impact." It's important to note that the test isn't quite as straightforward as it might sound. For one, genetics only accounts for a relatively small proportion of risk for high BMI. And secondly, a growing body of research is suggesting we move away from BMI as a measure of obesity and health in general. Still, the researchers claim the new PGS test is up to twice as accurate as others of its type. It was built from a database of genetic information collected from more than 5.1 million people. After compiling the test, the researchers then tried it out on several separate health databases, covering hundreds of thousands of individuals. In these datasets, both genetic data and BMI over time had been recorded. The researchers added the PGS to other predictors of BMI, and found that higher PGS scores were associated with greater adult weight gain. The accuracy of the PGS at predicting BMI variation depended on age and ancestry. PGS scores at the age of 5 explained 35 percent of the BMI variation at age 18. For middle-aged Europeans, it accounted for 17.6 percent of the variation. In other groups it was much lower: just 2.2 percent for rural Ugandans, for example. This is probably down to underrepresentation in the training data, and the greater genetic diversity in African populations, the researchers say. Another interesting finding from the study: those with stronger genetic predisposition towards having a higher BMI actually lost more weight during the first year of weight loss programs, although they were also more likely to regain weight later. "Our findings emphasize that individuals with a high genetic predisposition to obesity may respond more to lifestyle changes and, thus, contrast with the determinist view that genetic predisposition is unmodifiable," write the researchers in their published paper. The thinking is that if BMI can be predicted more accurately at an early age, that gives those kids and their parents a bigger window of time to instill healthier habits regarding diet or activity levels, which have the potential to influence BMI. "This new polygenic score is a dramatic improvement in predictive power and a leap forward in the genetic prediction of obesity risk, which brings us much closer to clinically useful genetic testing," says geneticist Ruth Loos, from the University of Copenhagen. The research has been published in Nature Medicine. Related News This Diet Helps Lower Dementia Risk, And We May Finally Know Why A Signal of Future Alzheimer's Could Hide in The Way You Speak Something Inside Your Gut Could Be Like a Natural Ozempic Solve the daily Crossword
